Offboarding is just as important as onboarding
People leave companies for a variety of reasons, some voluntarily, and some not. A smooth and painless employee offboarding process when an employee leaves is just as important to your company as a solid employee onboarding. While the term might not be heard as frequently, your offboarding process needs to be defined and consistently applied across every employee when they leave the company. Keep reading to see how you can implement this process if you don’t already have one or improve your existing offboarding program.
Why do we need an offboarding process?
A well-documented employee offboarding process can help to ensure compliance with various employment laws and can prevent errors (like not collecting a company-issued laptop from an employee). When your rock star employees depart on good terms, having a positive offboarding experience can help turn them into so-called “boomerang employees” who come back to the company in the future. Additionally, a good offboarding program can help with attracting top talent when your superstars recommend the company to their networks because they had an overall high-quality work experience from start to finish.
Offboarding checklist for HR and managers
Offboarding Checklist for Employees
Review non-compete and non-disclosure agreements
These forms are often used so that confidential company information—such as proprietary software and processes or customer lists—is retained within the company and not shared with your competition. If your employee signed a non-compete, non-disclosure, non-poaching or confidentiality agreement when they were hired, review the terms and conditions of the agreements with them before they leave. Be sure to address any penalties that will apply if an agreement is breached.
Conduct an employee exit interview
Exit interviews are a very important part of the offboarding process. They provide important insight into your business culture, processes, ethics and employee morale. By giving departing employees the opportunity to discuss their observations and reasons for leaving, HR can monitor these responses and determine trends and patterns over time. For example, if you have an employee retention problem in certain departments, maybe it’s time to take a look at the manager.
Here are a few questions to ask employees in their exit interviews:
- How did the job compare to your expectations when you started working here?
- Did you have all of the tools and resources to effectively do your job?
- Would you recommend our company to people in your network? Why or why not?
- Is there anything we could have done to persuade you to stay?
- How did you get along with your manager?
- What’s the biggest area we can focus on to improve?
If the working relationship wasn’t the best, an employee’s manager can often be a source of conflict. It’s usually best to have someone not close to the situation, such as an HR manager, to make the employee feel more at ease.
Tired of all the paper? Paycor can help!
Automating your offboarding program can help ensure you don’t miss critical steps in closing out your working relationship. To learn more, talk to a Paycor representative.
